Porter: WA taxpayers foot people smuggler costs

PEOPLE smugglers are a $60 million burden on WA, despite being federal prisoners.

Figures released to The Sunday Times show that 207 people smugglers entered the state's prisons since 2008, but the $59.9 million bill has been picked up by the state, not Canberra.

Trials of people smugglers comprised 14 per cent of all criminal cases in the WA District Court, costing the state an additional $4.6 million in 2011-12 alone.

Former WA attorney-general Christian Porter this week vowed that his first mission as a federal MP, if he wins the seat of Pearce at the next election, would be to convince the commonwealth to foot the bill for people smugglers in WA courts and jails. "The WA taxpayer is forgoing money that could be spent on schools or roads and having to use it instead to foot the bill for a colossal failure of immigration policy," Mr Porter said.

"The situation is not good enough and definitely one of the issues that would be front and centre of my agenda if I get the chance to take it to Canberra."

Mr Porter said it was another example of WA getting a bad hand from Canberra.

"There are any number of ways that Western Australia has been shabbily treated by the present Federal Labor Government, from breaking the promise to pay 75 per cent of native title claim compensation to the GST rip-off," Mr Porter said. "But few situations are as outrageous as the cost to WA taxpayers and the State Budget of putting accused people smugglers through West Australian courts and then footing the bill for what are usually close to three-year stays in West Australian prisons.

"When this issue was raised earlier this year at the attorney-generals' meetings, the Federal A-G's attitude was close to indifference, saying that compensation is taken care of through the GST system.

"For WA, that is a fistful of salt into this wound.

"The Federal Labor Government gives us massively increased costs from people smugglers, delivers us radical cuts in our GST monies and says everything is sweet. Well, it's not.

"The first and best solution to the costs being put on state budgets is to arrest the flow of arrivals, but until the Federal Government can achieve that there must be a direct, simple and fair way to compensate state budgets for the growing costs of a failed federal policy."

Corrective Services Minister Murray Cowper said previous calls on the Federal Government to compensate WA for people smuggler costs had fallen on deaf ears.

"While it does appear that these prisoners are starting to spread more equitably among other states, the financial strain is still an issue that needs to be addressed and it is an issue we will continue to fight to get a better deal on," Mr Cowper said.

A spokesman for federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said yesterday that the commonwealth already subsidised WA for federal prisoners through the GST system.